Others have answered your question regarding sigils and whitespace.

Perhaps you could avoid unexpected behavior by being more deliberate about using interpolating quotes only when you want to interpolate. Otherwise, always use non-interpolating quotes when you do not want to interpolate. The following will set the $bar variable equal to a string containing a literal dollar sign, followed by a number of spaces, followed by the literal string 'foo' (if that is what you really want). 

my $bar = '$    foo';

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See Quote and Quote like Operators

In reply to Re: Is space supposed to be ignored between a sigil and its variable name? by toolic
in thread Is space supposed to be ignored between a sigil and its variable name? by boom

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